Morning journal and courier., 1887-10-12
News by Telegraph FROM ALL QUARTERS. THIRTY LIVES LOST In A Railroad Wreck Out
 West.
 FIRE ADDS TO THE HORRORS. Two Whole Families Among
 The Dead. MORE MONEY IN CIRCULATION. An Interesting Scene On
 The Water.
MORE MONEY IN CIRCULATION.
A WESTERN RAILROAD HORROR.

Crowded EXprees-The Wrecked
 Train Takes Fire-At Least Thirt
 Persons Killed and Half as Man,
 Injured-SIckenfng Scenes in tI,
 Wreck-The Accident Probably tn Il Result of Carelessness.
 KoUTs, Ind, Oct. 1.-The worst horror r. of Chatsworth were duplicated here to-day d A dozen blood-stained, smoke-begrimed in : jured victims of railroad earelessness or blun
 dering were brought into the villages littl, s station early this morning and thfs afternoon d nine charred corpses, victims of the same = blundering or csrelessness, were laid upor
 the station platform, while three miles west ? down the track of the Chicago and Atlantic L railway near a lonely old water tank piles oi i, fearfully tangled debris marked the spot l where collision seldom equalled for terrible results had occurred. According to the best estimate obtainable, for only an estimate was
 possible, fully thirty human lives had been
 sacrificed outright and half that number of
 persons had suffered injuries more less
 serious. The eastbound express that left Chicago last night with great load of pas
 sengers had, with but moments warning,
 during temporary wait been smashed into
 from behind by loaded fast freight which
 was plunging madly forward in the dark
 hurryipg dressed meat to the markets of the
 seaboard. Some part of the machinery of
 the passenger engine had been thrown out
 of order during the run from Chicago and a
 trif1ing stop was made at the water tank.
 Suddenly out of the darkness behind came l the flash of headlight, the rush and rattle 1 of many wheels and then a mighty crash. The sleeping coach was pushed mercilessly forward by the freight and crushed into the
 cars forward, smashing their comparatively 1 light timbers and making the work of de-
 struction complete. The wreck quickly took | fire.
 The engineer of the passenger train, who
 was badly hurt, tells this story of the disas- ter: ''We passed No. 49 at Boon's Grove on time and started towards Kouts. No. 49 pulled out of the station in less than two l minutes behind us when they should have waited much longer. When we were well away from the town we could see her lights but little way behind. We were not run ming very fast because the engine was 'on one side'-we had broken an eccentric strap and were running but one pair of wheels, having been forced to disconnect the other pair of wheels which were running
 loose. Of course the accident held our speed
 down little, but had no idea that the
 engineer of No. 49 would have any difficulty
 in keeping off from our heels. The last time I looked behind there was ample room be- tween us. We stopped at the Boon Grove | before they struck us." !
 This afternoon when the reporters who had ! been long delayed in reaching Kouts owing to | the secretiveness of the railroad officials be- | gan at last to arrive there little in the I aspect of the village to indicate the calamity l that had so recently taken place. All the | dead bodies had been carefully removed from | sight, only two of the wounded were still in 4 the village and the local employees of the seekers after information The coroner had been obliged to go to Hunt ington, over fifty miles distant,
 to obtain the statements of witnesses, and the villagers seemed wholly at sea regarding the extent of the disaster. About the only per son willing to tell the details of the horror was Dr. W. 0. Mckee. He reached the l wreck shortly after 1 a. m. and immediately l began to give his services to the wounded. Those who were badly hurt when the crash came, he says, must have had little chance for their lives, so quickly had the cars taken fire and so thorough was the work of the flames. As an illustration of the destruction and the difficulty of arriving at a correct | idea of it's magnitude .the doctor said that probably not soul would have been made aware of the all but total wiping out of the Miller family of six had not their boy been saved. Dr. Mckee stated that only nine bod ies had been recovered and they were so badly charred as to be almost beyond the most left of any of them being blackened trunk and in some cases little beyond few handfuls of ashes. The nine were as follows: The Miller family of | Dundee, father, mother, two brothers and girl (their fourteen year old boy Herman will l probably die also); Dr. Perry, of North Jud- son. Ind, his wife and daughter, aged one, and young Irish lady.
 Superintendent Parsons, of the Chicago and Atlantic, was seen late in the afternoon gloomily pacing the station platform. He was extremely taciturn and was very sure I no more bodies could be found under the ! wreck. Only nine persons had been killed, he declared, and not more than eleven or twelve hurt, none of the latter seriously l He admitted that no fagman had been sent back from the passenger train when & stop was made. MT. Parsons said the train men l depended upon semaphore light fully two [ thousand feet in the rear of where the stop . was made. The conductor of the train had ! 5 pulled the cord for this light when he step- l I ped from his train. This would throw the | | alare of a red danger signal on the track. The night, however, was foggy and the en- gineer of the fast freight must have failed to zee the signal. MT. Parsons thought the ac- ,ident would have been very ordinary one t mad not the stove in the sleeper upset. That \ caused the destruction of the sleeper, two z coaches and baggage car and in the main was doubtless the cause of the loss of life. ?
 Among the wounded is Joseph McCool, | Boston bartender, who, had he not been | passenger on the ill-fated train, would have 1 t oeen welcomed in Chicago by his relatives whom he has not seen for years His injuries Ire for the most part internal, but are not so l ' evere but that his recovery is possible. He vas able to tell of the awful occurrence as ollows: ''I was in the passenger coach which vas next to the last car in the train. Just l Il before midnight I went into the smoker, | V which was just ahead of our car, and chatted o or an hour and came back to the coach with young man who sat down near me. That u s the last I have seen of the poor fellow. A lust as | had stretched myself out to go to | A leep and almost before I closed my eyes . here was an awful crash, which, God help ne, never want to hear again. found myr a ar and then became insensible. On the h vay up I realized that all was confusion ' D the car, that canes, valises, rods of iron ' nd lamps were in the air about me. must ave regained my consciousness in 8 very D hort time for when awoke all was dark | e less in the car and horrible shrieks and D 'iercing walls of agony almost deafened ii ne. In the end of the car furthest from me c, he stove was overturned and the flames were u ust starting to spread with magic rapidity. et here was some sort of new gas lamp in the al ar with reservoirs reaching from one to the 8, ther. The flames leaped up the sides and D n less time than can tell it the gas was SC turning the whole length of the coach over UT heads. I was wedged in between wo seats where I could not move limb of my body and there watched he fire slowly creep upon me- l h was terrible sight. On the end of the p oach near the fire I could see lady M aught between the seats as was. The fire =, lowly crept across the car; she was soon en- o' eloped in flames and then in agony she p turned before my eyes. Just across from S ny seat noticed shortly before the accident P father, his wife and daughter. I saw them e' lso crushed together and burned. Just as he flames were blazing a foot or two away rom me man pulled me into the aisle and aid, Come to the window He must have ii mistaken me for someone else, for the mo- nent he had looked closely at my face he al ropped me and hurried through the cl 7indow with an exclamation of dissppoint p' aent. I then painfully c1awled after him in u